Midjourney may ban images of Biden and Trump
With the advent of artificial intelligence tools that can quickly create modified images and videos, it has become easier than ever to produce fake images to spread political disinformation ahead of the upcoming US presidential election. According to Bloomberg, Midjourney proposes to ban political images entirely. David Holtz, Midjourney’s CEO, reportedly told users during a Discord chat that the company is close to banning images such as those of Biden and Trump within the next 12 months.
“I know it’s fun to make Trump images – I make Trump images,” he told the users who attended the session. “Trump is aesthetically very interesting. However, it’s probably better not to do it – it’s better to be a little distracted during this election. We’ll see.”
As Bloomberg notes, people have previously used the company’s artificial intelligence to create fakes about Trump’s arrest. The company stopped free trials of its AI image generator after the images – along with the infamous fake news about the Pope wearing a Balenciaga-style coat – went viral.
The company already has rules in place that prohibit the creation of “misleading public figures” and “images of events” that “may be misleading.” However, Bloomberg was still able to create modified images of Trump covered in spaghetti using the old version of the Midjourney system, while the new version refused to generate modified images of the former president. Of course, even if Midjourney bans images of famous politicians, it will only protect its platform from attracting the wrath of critics and being in the spotlight this election season. This will not prevent the use of artificial intelligence tools in political disinformation campaigns or the spread of fake information to manipulate elections in general.
Other tech companies have also taken steps to prevent political disinformation or at least make it easier to detect. ChatGPT will soon start tag images created with DALL-E 3, and Meta is working on developing technology that can detect and mark whether an image, video or audio clip was created with artificial intelligence.
